British Airways, LOT and AirBaltic stop flying to Armenia for commercial reasons

Friday, March 29, 11:41

British Airways, LOT and AirBaltic stopped flying to Armenia in 2012 for commercial reasons, Head of the Chief Civil Aviation Department of Armenia Artyom Movsesyan said during a briefing on Thursday.

"During our meeting with representatives British Airways, we asked if there were other reasons for stopping the flights, and they said that it was their commercial policy to close certain flights. One of the additional factors was the stoppage of the flights to Iran," Movsesyan said.

He said that the Polish LOT and the Latvian AirBaltic also had commercial motives for stopping to fly to Armenia.

"For the same reasons we have failed to organize flights to North America as they would not be very popular and would cause losses," Movsesyan said.

He said that the ban on Armavia's flights to Beirut was due to the Lebanese air authorities' request to audit the Armenian company. "The delay with the audit is due to some staff reshuffles in the Lebanese audit agency," Movsesyan said.

He recalled that several years ago the aviation authorities of Kuwait suggested serving flights in Al Kuwait Airport on beneficial terms and carrying out air communication between that country and Armenia. Movsesyan said that Armenia is also interested in organizing air communication between the two countries, but these flights cannot be profitable yet, therefore, Armenia and Kuwait are quite careful in this matter. "But I do not lose hope that we will gain progress here, as the relations between the two countries' governments are quite actively developing, and the economic efficiency in other spheres will lead to establishment of air communication", he said.

Besides the national air carrier Armavia, a number of Russian air companies make flights to Armenia, namely, Aeroflot, SarAvia, S7, Polet Airlines, UTair, Transaero. So do Lufthansa (Germany), Air France, Austrian Airlines, Aseman Airlines (Iran), Czech Airlines, Fly Dubai.